Nine Kingdoms: Dreamer's Daughter Part 16

"I never hid that magic I don't have," she said firmly, "because, as I said, I don't have any."

He looked around himself, then fetched something and put it on a small, flat rock. "A pinecone," he said seriously. "Why don't you see if you can hide it."

She started to deny that she knew how to do anything of the sort, but realized that wasn't precisely true. She surrendered her backpack to the elven madman who put both hers and his in a pile and then looked at her expectantly. She closed her eyes briefly, then laid a spell over the pinecone. She knew what to say because Bruadair's magic told her.

The pinecone faded, then disappeared.

"Hmmm," Rnach said thoughtfully, stroking his chin. "Can you undo that spell?"

"Undo it?"

"Either reverse it, or perhaps use a spell of revealing?"

Aisling found that the words were there, again, ready for her use. She looked at Rnach. "I don't like this."

His smile was terribly gentle. "I know, love. But if it eases you any, I think your country's magic seems fairly determined to have you take note of it."

She couldn't even scowl at him, he'd said it so gently and with such a conspiratorial smile. She rolled her eyes on principle, then took the spell the magic had given her and used it on the spot in front of her where she'd hidden- The pinecone that was again revealed.

And then the world rent in twain.

The pinecone exploded. So did the spell covering a path that led from the glade into the woods. Rnach shouldered both packs, called for the dogs, then looked at her.

"Well, let's follow that then, shall we?"

"Are you mad?" she gasped. "We're to simply up and walk into that forest there?"

He took her by the hand. "Let's go and see where this leads."

She wanted to balk, truly she did. It would have been much easier, even at that late date, to simply turn around and run the other way. But she knew she couldn't. Rnach was watching her. She had two shapechanging horses watching her.

Bruadair's magic was watching her.

She took a deep breath, gathered what scant courage she had, and nodded briskly. "Off we go, then."

Rnach said nothing. He simply waited for her to move. She did, eventually, though it was perhaps one of the more difficult steps she had ever taken. After all, it was just a path . . .

Through an obviously enchanted wood that had revealed the path in question thanks to a spell she hadn't known ten minutes earlier but had used as easily as if she'd known it all her life. She could accept that, with enough time.

She wished she could accept the fact that she had the feeling she wasn't going to like what they found at the end of that path.

Ten.

Rnach followed the faint path with a fair bit of caution, with a ferocious equine-born hound in front of him, Aisling next to him, and his own pony-turned-canine bringing up the rear. He hadn't been surprised that Aisling's spell had turned up more than she'd cared for it to. He also hadn't been surprised that the true extent of her magic had been revealed in her home country. In fact, he was half tempted to say he was no longer surprised by anything.

But that would have been a lie because as he stopped fifty paces away from a house, he found himself too surprised to continue on.

"Well," he said, nonplussed.

"I couldn't agree more."

He glanced at Aisling to find her wearing the same expression he was sure was plastered to his own visage. He turned back to the house in front of him and wondered if they would have walked right into the side of the house without Aisling's spell or simply wandered into the stream running alongside it and drowned.

The house itself looked like the sort of house one might find in the mountains: steep roof, rough timbers, utilitarian with the odd touches of whimsy here and there. It looked as if it belonged to someone who made his living from the land, but not in any magical way. A stream, which on second glance turned out to be fairly large, flowed along one side of the house, turning a large waterwheel. Rnach had no idea what the owner of the house did to earn his bread, but perhaps he ran a mill or a woodshop or something that required a fairly steady, unmagical source of power.

He watched the wheel for a moment or two, then realized that was where the circles began.

Rnach found himself walking with Aisling up the path to the gate set in a low rock fence. That was the last thing he saw that didn't have some sort of curve to it. They entered the gate to find circular stones leading up to the house, curves in the edges of the flowerbeds, stones encircling a dozen different varieties of fruit trees. He was half tempted to ask Aisling if those trees had any stories to tell, but he didn't have the chance.

The front door had opened.

That perhaps might have been unremarkable, but Aisling had come to a staggering halt and was gaping at the man standing there.

"Recognize him?" Rnach murmured.

She wheezed out something that he was fairly sure was a curse. He looked at the tall, unfortunately quite intimidating-looking man standing there, then wondered if it might be wise to release Aisling's hand. The moment the thought crossed his mind, she tightened her fingers with his and glared at him.

"Don't you dare."

He supposed when she put it that way, he shouldn't. He nodded toward their potential host.

"Who's that?"

"One of the Guild guards!" She looked torn between raging and weeping. "He handed me off to the fop-or, rather, to Prince Soilleir, who then dragged me down to the border where Mistress Muinear got me across into the tender care of Ochadius of Riamh. And here, after a very circuitous route, I find myself facing that man again!"

Rnach ventured a look at the man standing in the doorway. He looked . . . haggard.

But he seemingly had no lack of courage, for he stepped out into the sunlight just the same. Rnach would have winced at the sight of hair the same color as Aisling's, but he supposed he shouldn't. She had to have inherited it from somewhere. It was obvious she had inherited it from that man there.

The man continued down his path, away from his house, until he was standing a handful of paces away.

"Aisling," he said quietly. "Welcome home."

She looked at him, mute. Actually, she looked as if she were wrestling with the intense desire to kill him.

Rnach couldn't blame her. There was a man who obviously knew her, who had obviously sent her away, and now had the gall to welcome her home? And just what did he expect her to do? Fall on his neck and weep with joy?

Rnach found himself the object of a quick, brutal a.s.sessment that began at his boots and ended at his face, with a practiced check conducted along the way for weapons. It was at the end, however, that the man's whole demeanor changed. He glanced at Aisling's hand in Rnach's, then gave him a look that was tinged with something it took Rnach a moment or two to identify, and he wasn't unaccustomed to warning looks from fathers. This was something else entirely. He rather strongly suspected that if his hand strayed to his sword or he looked as if he might spew out a spell, he would find himself rather dead.

"Who," the man said very carefully, "are you?"

Aisling offered no opinion. Rnach supposed he might have to have a chat with her about that later. She did, however, squeeze his hand and shift a bit closer to him. That didn't improve her father's opinion.

"My name is Rnach," Rnach said slowly.

"You resemble someone I've recently seen."

Rnach wished he could have said he was surprised. "And did this person have a name?"

"None that I could discover, but he looks a d.a.m.ned sight like you." The man considered, but his expression didn't soften. "Acair, I think. Something along those lines."

Rnach sighed. "My half brother-"

He supposed the only reason he continued to breathe was because Bruadair thought his death might grieve Aisling and it had spared him from the spell that slammed into him-and only him-and knocked him flat on his back. Once he could see again through the stars swimming around his b.l.o.o.d.y stupid head, he found that Aisling was standing in front of him holding off a spell of death with her mere presence alone. He gaped at the shards of spell that were hanging over him like scores of portcullis spikes and supposed he couldn't be blamed for indulging in a shudder.

"He is my betrothed," Aisling said distinctly. "I do not want him harmed."

The spikes hesitated, then tucked themselves rather reluctantly back into what he could see was a canopy of death still hanging over his head. He shot those lethal shards of spell a wary look, then accepted Aisling's hand back up to his feet. He stood there and did his d.a.m.ndest to catch his breath without looking as if he were desperately trying to catch his breath.

Perhaps it was time to revisit the ability to keep his mouth shut he'd learned so well in Buidseachd.

Aisling's father was pointing at him with an unfriendly finger. "Do you have any idea who that is?"

"Do you think you have any right to ask that question?" Aisling countered.

"His father is Gair of Ceangail!"

Rnach glanced at Aisling to see how she was reacting to that piece of truth. She merely shrugged.

"His mother was Sarait of Trr Drainn. I know his grandfather and several of his cousins. Very handsome, those lads, but I like this one the most."

And then that blessed girl glanced at him and winked.

Rnach rubbed his free hand over his mouth because he needed something to do besides laugh. He looked at Aisling's father.

"I am Rnach of Ceangail," he conceded, "and while I am my father's sp.a.w.n, I am my mother's son." Or so he hoped. Given how his magic had been behaving since Aisling had restored it to him, he was beginning to wonder if somehow some of his father's madness had found its way into his veins as well.

The other man didn't look terribly pleased, but he wasn't spewing out spells so perhaps they would at least manage conversation before things went south again.

"I don't like this," he said crisply.

"I'm not sure you'll have anything to say about it," Aisling said. "My life is my own to share with whom I choose. And I choose this man here."

The spikes of death rattled once more, sounding like crisp, icy snow falling in the dead of winter, then disappeared.

Aisling's father looked at her. "Very well," he said slowly. "Be it as you will. I suppose I have no right to tell you what to do. I do, however, have answers that you deserve. I have waited many years to give them to you."

"They had best be d.a.m.ned good answers," she said curtly.

The man sighed deeply. "I'm not sure you'll find them such, but they will at least be the truth." He looked at her seriously. "If nothing else, perhaps I can a.s.sure you that you weren't completely alone all those years."

Aisling looked as if she were on the verge of simply having heard as much as she could bear. Rnach squeezed her hand and wished he could take the pain he knew she was facing away from her. She looked up at him.

"I suppose I must do this."

"It's why we came," he agreed. "And thank you for my life."

She shivered. "What a nasty spell. And I wish I could take credit for saving your life, but that wasn't entirely me. Well," she amended, "I was alarmed, which I suppose Bruadair knew." She smiled at him. "I think it likes you."

"Thank heavens."

"I like you too."

"I don't think your father does."

"I don't think he's allowed an opinion."

Rnach thought she might be surprised, but he wasn't going to argue with her. He merely smiled, then walked with her behind a man who looked absolutely shattered. Obviously he'd been expecting Aisling. Whether or not he'd realized how difficult it would be to see her at his home or relished the thought of giving her the answers he surely knew she wanted was perhaps another tale entirely.

The house was as unremarkable on the inside as on the out. There was something about it, though, that seemed strange. Rnach saw no other spells, but he hadn't seen the first one coming either. He took a deep breath and added that to the list of things he was definitely going to have to come to grips with very soon.

Aisling's father's house looked as if it had been inhabited only recently after a long absence. It wasn't so much that it wasn't clean as it was that it was empty of the sort of usual clutter that accompanied a family living in a home. He walked behind Aisling, forcing himself to leave his hands down by his side instead of putting one on his sword, not that his sword would have served him. He didn't even have his magic as anything to count on at the moment.

That was something he was going to have to address sooner rather than later, truth be told.

He watched their surroundings, perhaps more closely than necessary, simply out of habit and a desire to make certain there wasn't someone hiding in the shadows he might not particularly want to encounter.

Aisling looked over her shoulder periodically, as if she wanted to make certain he was still there. Finally she simply reached behind her and took his hand. He didn't argue. He kept her hand in his as they walked along a short pa.s.sageway, made a quick turn, then paused as Aisling's father opened the worn wooden doors and walked into the chamber there.

Rnach paused at the doorway to admire. Admittedly, he had a fondness for libraries, but this one was truly spectacular. The shelves lined the walls from floor to ceiling in proper library fashion, of course, and there were lamps and chairs and all manner of comforts made with the lover of books in mind. Oh, along with one enormous spinning wheel in the corner.

Which wasn't, as it happened, the only wheel there.

He realized with a start that there were wheels everywhere. He could have walked around the room and every two paces reached out to touch something that spun. He hazarded a look at Aisling to find that she had noticed as well. She looked at him, her eyes wide.

"Well," she whispered.

"This is going to be interesting," he murmured. "For more than just the usual reasons, I daresay."

"I can scarce wait to see how," she agreed.

Rnach supposed he should have at least had the manners to have found a st.u.r.dy bookcase to lean against, but all he could do was walk out into the middle of the chamber and continue to turn around- As if he were the center of a wheel that was continually spinning.

That was a slightly unsettling realization, actually, considering where he was and whom he was with.

He looked around himself, marveling at what the library contained. The whole place was full of wheels, either things that were spinning at various rates or things built in the shape of circles or spokes radiating out from centers into shapes that might be bent into circles with the right amount of force. It made him wonder who in the house was so fixated with things that spun.

Aisling's father excused himself to fetch them something to drink, or so he said. Rnach looked at Aisling, who was now standing in the middle of that chamber of wheels and books, and winced at the haunted look on her face. He gathered her to him when she walked into his embrace. If she was holding him so tightly he was tempted to flinch, so be it. He kept watch on the door and didn't say anything about how badly she was trembling.

"Don't leave me."